Lord of Ultima Strategy/Guide/Wiki

Sunday, April 12, 2020

I've been playing LoU for about 2 years now under the name sleepmonster. I've been very fortunate to be a part of some really good alliances in world 20, 38 and 69. I learned a lot of strategies from playing the game and from other great players. If you want to play with me, here's my link: http://www.lordofultima.com/ref/2371748513The goal of the game is to get 8 level ten places, one of each virtue. You should aim to grow your empire, contribute to palaces, protect your cities and removing threats on your continent. Read the entries below:

Game Mechanics

I didn't have to write this before, but since EA replaced the LoU Wiki with the useless forum, I have no place of reference for game mechanics. Most of the content in this section is plagerized from the old LoU Wiki. I only make updates to reflect changes to the game.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Kill troops. The main and most important purpose of an assault is to kill troops in the target castle. An assault deals 5 times the damage as a siege wave. In an attack to take control of or destroy the castle, an assault is usually sent a second before a siege to significantly reduce or eliminate defenses in the city.

Gain fame and purified resources. The second and related reason to send an assault is to get purified resources and gain fame points from killing the troops in the target castle. Every time you kill a player's units (also applies for lawless cities,) you gain fame points. The amount of fame points you gain is equal to the recruiting cost of the unit killed. For example, a ranger costs 150 wood to recruit. If you kill one ranger, you get 150 fame points. For each 4000 fame points you get in a single attack, you also get 1 of each type of purified resources.

Loot resources. An assault also plunders resources of the target castle. Similar to a plunder command, an assault can also loot resources from the target castle. So, all the reasons to plunder a city also applies to assault. However, a non-castled city cannot be assaulted, but can be plundered.

Example: Here is an example of an assault report. I had previous scouted and saw that this castle has mages at home. Score! Mages are really good at attacking, but bad at defending, especially against knights. I sent this assault solely for the purpose of killing the mages. I sent one single scout with the knights and got all the castle information. I also looted resources as a bonus.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Plundering is used to loot resources from other cities. There are several reasons to plunder:

To gain resources faster than raiding dungeons. In the early stage of the game, dungeons are few and far apart. Sometimes it's faster and more profitable to plunder neighbors, and lawless cities. These cities are sometimes referred to as "farm." Dungeon adds a 2 hour round trip to a raid. There are also dungeon monsters that kill your troops and lower your profit. Your ideal targets are

Defenseless cities of an inactive player or lawless cities, you can steal resources without any losses.

Cities of players without an alliance. They may have some troops, but they won't get any support from anyone else. Their cities maybe weakly protected, and you don't countered from an upset alliance.

Cities of players in a much smaller alliances than yours. If the cities have a lot of resources, you may still want to take the risk of a counter.

Be careful of plundering a big alliance. It can escalate into an all out war.

To suppress growth of a neighbor. If you have enemies around you, it's your best interest to slow their growth as much as possible. Plundering their resources can disrupt their building and recruitment queue and ultimately slow their growth. This can also be used as a tactic to prevent a continental invasion by another alliance.

To starve troops inside a sieged castle. When a castle is under siege, all the troops (including support troops from other cities) consume food from the sieged city, not where they came from. Some battles can involve millions of troops and consume 100k+ food/hr. The castle under seige also cannot make request for resources. So emptying out the food supply can starve out a lot of troops.

Example: Here's an example of a plunder report. This is one of my easy target that I plundered over and over again for resources.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Scout Attacks

Amount of goods that can be plundered, including goods that in building or recruiting queues. Goods in hideout are not revealed.

Fortification information including type and level of walls, towers, and traps

Building information including type and level of all buildings

Purpose of scouting

Before you send an attack (plunder, siege, or assault) you want to send scouts to find out if you will have a successful attack or not. Scouts are relatively cheap to recruit, and they don't engage in battle with other unit types.

You want to know the type of defending troops, depending what's in the castle you would know what to send. Look at the stats of each unit to see what their weaknesses are. For example:

If the defending troops are rangers, then you would send knights to attack. Knights cut through rangers like a hot knife through butter.

If the defending troops are guardians, you would send mages or warlocks

If the defending troops are templars, you would send beserkers

You want to know the TS of the defending castle/city. You need more power to have a successful attack.

Walls and towers provide additional defenses, knowing what type of towers and/or traps are in the city can affect your outcome

Building types and levels are also important for the same reason.

After you gather all information, you can plug them into a combat calculator to determine battle outcome.

In a scouting attack, only scouts may participate.

If the defending city has no scouts, all information is revealed.

If all your attacking scouts die, no information is revealed.

If any scouts survive, the amount and type of all defending troops are visible. You won't know if the troops in the defending city are from that city or sent from another city. The report will show as if all defending troops are from the defending city. (In the defense report, supporting players and cities where the troops came from are also revealed)

If the number of surviving attacking scouts is higher than the number of surviving defending scouts the attacker will know the amount of goods that can be plundered.

If the number of surviving attacking scouts is twice that of the number of surviving defending scouts the amount and level of fortification is revealed

If surviving attacking scouts is four times the surviving defending scouts the amount and level of all buildings is revealed.

Super Scout

You can send scouts with your plundering, siege, or assault command and achieve the same results and if you send scouts alone. If the defending city has no scout, you can send just 1 scout with your plunder, siege, or assault and acquire all information.

Pseudo Scout

If you have no scouts, you can send any type of unit to a castle or city in a plunder, siege or assault (sieges and assaults only apply to castles.) If any troop survive, you will get the amount and type of all defending troops. Sometimes, I would send a minimum TS of zerks to a city and castle and see what i get.

Example: In this example, I gained information on units, resources, and defense structures, but failed to gain information on buildings.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

General Notes

Strategies will only help you gain an edge if your opponent is about equal in military power. If you have one castle and they have ten, chances are, you will loose. You can look at the ranking list to see how many offensive/defensive TS other people have. The names are not revealed, you can see where you stand on a continent. Pick your target carefully. As the saying goes: if you can't beat them, join them. :)

Time Commitment

Lord of Ultima requires a lot of time commitment, especially if you are going military or PvP. Many of these strategies requires you to be online when the attack hits, so you can move troops around, send support, recall sieges, send reinforcements, etc... If you don't have time to spend on the game, I would recommend not to play PvP. You may also ask someone you trust to sub for you when you are away.

Join an alliance

It would be very difficult to fight by yourself. Coordinated PvP is much more effective than being a lone ranger. You will be fighting on a different level. Join an alliance and get help from your peers, preferably the #1 or #2 alliance on your continent. Win or loose, it will be a lot more fun.

Ministers

To play PvP effectively, you must have ministers to schedule attacks, schedule defense, auto recruit, notify your alliance of incoming attacks, etc. Sometimes, seconds are crucial in PvP. You also don't want to stay up late to schedule an attacks that lands at 10 am.

Should you recruit more offensive or defensive troop? The answer is both. But how many of each type depends on the type of player you are and the continent you're in. If you are on a safe continent (a continent that is primarily dominated by your alliance without any non-allied castles,) you may want to recruit mostly offensive troops. Offensive troops such as zerks and knights are also much better at raiding dungeons then their counterparts: rangers and xbows.

If you are on a hostile continent, you may want to recruit more defensive troops. You will get attacked, since most alliance will want to eliminate threats and take the entire continent for themselves. Offensive troops will drop like flies when attacked. Their defensive stats are generally very low.

More about offensive and defensive strategies.

Military Builds

Refrain from building a rainbow castle! A rainbow castle is one that has every single unit type in it. You will get laughed at attacking with a rainbow army. Imagine Bay to Breaker in San Francisco. :)

Jokes aside, your focus should be on maximizing recruiting speed and barrack space. There are a few exceptions. For example:

Very early stage of the game when you can't really afford to build an entire military castle. You may want to mix resources and military and castle it for a free title advancement.

Self-fed castle. This is a castle that has mixed food and military. Generally only for people who play without ministers.

You may want to put a trinsic temple in an offensive castle to conquer a castle.

Troops/Frigate castles. For intercontinental purposes.

It's also recommended not to mix offensive and defensive troops in the same castle. When you send an attack, it's much better to attack with one group of 100k TS, than ten groups with 10k TS each. You cannot combine units from different castles for offense, but you can for defense. Again, there are exceptions to the mixed troop rule, for example:

Very early stage of the game, when you can't afford building an entire castle for offense and another for defense. You need different types of troops for different purposes, but you only have one castle.

For raiding, some players like to mix beserkers and guardians because guardians can carry 1.5x loot than beserkers.

Attitudes

Keep in mind that this is only a game. The person on the other side is a real human being. Have fun and don't be a jerk. If you have something to say, send them a polite message. Hate mail gets reposed on alliance forum to get laughed at.